Watch: Sir Tom Jones belts out Delilah after taking aim at the WRU

The WRU condemns domestic violence but it doesn’t mind a bit of institutional misogyny.

'Delilah' does not have 'murderous themes'. Man knows he's done wrong and that they are going to break down the door and get him. He's toast. It is a warning against violence. Its also a terrific sing. Melodrama, a lot like 'Tosca, a top-ten opera. Same theme, but woman instead of man. He done her wrong, she kills him but has to die. All fantastic music. What does the WRU know?

If Delilah doesn't feature at rugby internationals the repertoire of a significant proportion of Wales supporters will just comprise of the first verse and chorus of Bread of Heaven and the chorus of Hymns and Arias. "Praise the Lord! We are a musical people."

Perhaps poor Tom doesn't understand the lyrics. I'd hate to think he's too dumb to adapt to change.

Of all the hills to die on....

Condemns domestic violence except in the case your official partners Guinness and Heineken as they pay lots of money.

Twm ti'n esgus o Gymro...

"Homecoming" , says enough for me.

Bread of Heaven; when I was a very young boy I assumed we had two national anthems because I would hear this so rousingly sung at Wales Five Nations matches on Grandstand (showing my age here). I'm not keen on Delilah because it's been adopted by fans of Stoke City (a club I can't be doing with) rather than anything else. Apart from that I'm indifferent to it, it wouldn't be my choice at a Wales game but there you go. It's got no significance to Wales, it's just a song sung by a man from Wales. It's not worth getting too bothered about. Too much culture war nonsense these days, the only beneficiaries of culture war are those who use it turn people on each other and divide them into distinct groups who want nothing to do with each other. Such polarisation can only harm things like the Welsh language.

Unfortunately, if this logic is pursued, then any drama, film, song etc, involving violence, domestic or otherwise, should be banned. The song is not triumphalistic, or vindictive, but is full of regret and dramatic pathos. As so is Shakespeare

Its a misogynistic song. It is about as acceptable as watching repeats of the Black and White Minstrels. Thing of how survivors of domestic violence when they hear people singing and glorifying this so called anthem. Tom Jones is tone deaf to the issues surrounding it and should stop singing it.

It strikes me that these days even the Welsh National Opera would have trouble putting on ‘The Threepenny Opera’, in which Mack the Knife, the main character, sings:   Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear And he shows them pearly white Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear And he keeps it out of sight   When the shark bites with his teeth, dear Scarlet billows start to spread Fancy gloves, though, wears Macheath, dear So there’s not a trace of red   On the sidewalk Sunday morning Lies a body oozing life Someone’s sneaking ’round the corner Is the someone Mack the Knife?   This Jack-the-Ripper-type theme was used by Bertolt Brecht in writing the libretto, and it was set to music by the maestro Kurt Weil, both major artistic figures. The ballad has been covered by a number of popular singers, such as Bobby Darin. Tom Jones is only following in a well-established genre with his rendering of ‘Delilah’. Murder ballads are a subgenre of the traditional ballad form, dealing with a crime or a gruesome death. Their lyrics form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath. The term refers to the content, and may be applied to traditional ballads, which are part of oral culture. Murder ballads make up a notable portion of traditional ballads.   I only mention these facts for the benefit of our ignorant self-appointed censors, who are sadly deficient in their education.   I hope Tom Jones’s fans will ignore these pipsqueaks and milquetoasts to belt out ‘Delilah’ with appropriate passion!

I really don’t believe Welsh rugby fans sing this because they think it is OK to kill a woman out of jealousy. Obviously, the song is belted out because the tune is felt to be suitably rousing, in a general way. Ordinary folks don’t overthink their behaviour, and the lyrics are regarded simply as the excuse for a stirring burst of massed choral singing at the game. This song would be a totally irrational choice for a rugby anthem if that was not the case. But if we want to analyse the words, what we have here is sheer old-fashioned melodrama, the sort of thing to be found in the lurid ballads of yore and also graphically presented in the broadsides and ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ of those times. Even today people love to read of such horrific crimes and to see them enacted on their media screens. Some of today’s popular output is far more questionable than ‘Delilah’, in which the character portrayed in the song actually realises that his ‘crime of passion’ brings the police to his door, and he ends the ballad full of regret for his dreadful deed. So, while the words of the song obviously do not represent a situation of which we should approve today, yet the protagonist himself is revealed as admitting his madness and does not seek to evade the authorities, who are coming to ‘break down the door’ and presumably arrest him. There is some tragic heroism in this realisation. Such drama is cleansing. Now, if the tragic and the melodramatic are to be banned, then entire swathes of culture, from both popular sensations to high classical tragedy, would logically have to be swept away, if we are to be ethically consistent. But of course, we need not labour the point: Our new Puritans are as bad as the old ones and cannot abide the robust and lurid rough-and-tumble of humanity. Life, like the contact sport of Rugby, is, after all, a bruising encounter. Nevertheless, the braying of traditional battle-cries and the strict formality of the blood-and-guts displayed on the field of conflict keeps the violence within the bounds of the highly conventionalised rules of the game. Like the song, each game enacts a traditional drama. It is a ritual of sacrifice, offered up for the greater Glory of Wales. Catharsis is its consequence, as much as in Classical drama. All taint of violent guiltiness is expunged. The murderer and his unfaithful lover can therefore be taken as a paradigm of primitive passions, where love and loss become a metaphor of winning and losing. Don’t let the bloodless censors neuter the raw glory of this Arena of Rugby where the giant Spirits of an ancient Past can yet be channelled, in rituals that spring from the untamed, unbroken Heart of Old Wales. Those puny moralists want to cut us off entirely from our vigorous forbears, reducing us to tame and feeble creatures like themselves. But these petty edicts must never be permitted to suppress the heroic passions of the Cymru! We cannot live unless our blood is stirred. These frigid officials may as well try to silence the warlike cry of ‘The Men of Harlech’ or Bowdlerise the martial spirit of our stirring National anthem: ‘Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tra mad, Dros ryddid collasant eu gwaed’ !